REVIEW: Hypothermia

Some movies are just plain average. There’s nothing particularly good about them, yet neither is there anything particularly bad about them. It’s hard to write about those movies. I thought Hypothermia was going to be one of those movies.

But sometimes there’s a movie that has just one element that tips it one way or the other. That’s the kind of movie Hypothermia turns out to be. Unfortunately, it’s one bad element. And since this element is such a big part of the movie, it tips it the bad way.

Before I describe that part, let me describe the good… er, average part. Great star! Who doesn’t want to see Merle himself from The Walking Dead, Michael Rooker, kick some monster ass? Well, someone ought to make that movie because it ain’t Hypothermia. Rooker is good, but he’s mostly restrained as a father trying to protect his family from a lake creature on a weekend… zzzzz… ice fishing trip.

I did learn something from him, though. Did you realize you could fall through a hole in the ice, float submerged in freezing water for several minutes, then wake up the next morning as if nothing happened? I’m willing to suspend my disbelief once, but I’ll be darned if it doesn’t happen again later to another character. They’re defying the laws of nature up there in New York.

I’m willing to forgive two suspensions of disbelief because they do move along the story. When a father and son drive onto the lake with their luxury mobile ice fishing motor home and threaten to stir things up with their loud music and beer-drinking, there’s a nice little Hatfields and McCoys thing going on. That makes it all the better for them to team up to capture the large fish (“probably a Sturgeon”) that’s whooshing by beneath the ice.

Wow, now that I read this, Hypothermia does sound a little less than average all the way around. Truly, though, the acting and the situation are just average. Nothing more and nothing less.

What drags it down is the Sturgeon itself. I’ve seen bad rubber monster suits before. But this isn’t even a bad rubber monster suit. Seriously, it looks like a normal-sized man in a wetsuit with department store costume “wings” hanging beneath his arms. But worse than that is his head. It looks like a Mexican wrestling mask with a painted-on mouth. I swear, I don’t think there was any mobility to a jaw that was supposed to be chewing up people.

For all of that, I still find it forgivable for a bad-looking monster to be used sparingly and in dark shadows. But I don’t not find it forgivable for a bad-looking monster to be shown in a wide-open shot, running willy-nilly after a potential victim, waving its arms back and forth in the air. That’s just me. (To be fair, I also hated in Mamma Mia when all the women skipped across the bridge waving their arms in the air.)

I hate to write about a movie like this when I bet the filmmakers have good intentions. But I’m trying to be funny. And that’s my point. This monster is so ridiculous, that there’s no real threat. It’s like we aren’t shown the real monster and it’s still lurking beneath the ice. Hey, you could do worse any Saturday night by turning on the SyFy channel. But you could also do a lot better.